Development of Professional Associations in Russia : A Research into Institutional Framework, Self-Regulation Activity, and Barriers to Professionalization

Professional associations in Russia are to some extent novices in contemporary professional regulation. Only small part of them can play significant role in enforcement of professional control (representing professional community in front of other stakeholders, adopting professional standards, ensuring market closure, protecting of prevalence of professional ethics, etc.). Partially that comes from the lack of experience of self-regulation that professions have in the Russian history and sharp invasion of the global market in the 1990s, partially that follows tradition of state predominance in economy and society. During the last two decades a mass of organizations arose in Russia calling themselves professional associations, guilds, societies and unions. The task to understand who they are, whether they can and they ought to represent professional community and what are their ways of professional self-regulation became now a pressing practical problem and an interesting research task. The object of this research is mapping the field of variety of non-government organizations that claim institutional control as professional associations in order to clarify the following issues: - What are the main forms of professional associations by their qualitative characteristics - What are their actual means and feasible opportunities to achieve professional control in their field of expertise or at least influence it - What are the main limits of professional self-regulation they dispose and whether there are any alternative forms of professional regulation in certain professional areas?